


Valuable Lessons Learned On The Tilt-A-Whirl, or "Babe, You Ought To Quit This Scene Too"

by jugheadjones



Series: Senior Year [4]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Fairground Rides, Friendship, High School, Multi, Mutual Pining, Pining, Roller Coasters, Vomiting, carnival food, fp can't do roller coasters, messy love triangles, or love?, tunnel of love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 09:53:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12702429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jugheadjones/pseuds/jugheadjones
Summary: "I'm going to hurl," says FP."FP, we haven't even gone on anything yet.”"I know, I'm just warning you. At some point in the next twenty-four hours I am going to totally and completely lose my lunch."or, it's tradition that Alice, Hermione, Fred and FP all go to the fair together on opening night.





	Valuable Lessons Learned On The Tilt-A-Whirl, or "Babe, You Ought To Quit This Scene Too"

**Author's Note:**

> i haven't written one of these in so long and i don't love it?? but it was fun to write i miss these kiddos.

_"this boardwalk life's through" - **bruce springsteen**_

* * *

"I'm going to hurl," says FP.

"FP, we haven't even gone on anything yet.”

"I know, I'm just warning you. At some point in the next twenty-four hours I am going to totally and completely lose my lunch."

Hermione checks her watch. “Well, we’ve got five hours until they close up the big stuff. See if you can hold on.”

"Why are we here again?" asks Alice.

"Its tradition."

"So's me puking every year like clockwork.”

"You talk yourself into it,” Hermione accuses him. “Try some positive thinking this year. This year, I am not going to hurl."

"Won't work."

"Why not."

FP points at the largest standing roller coaster, which Fred is already regarding with a mix of wonder and awe.

"Hey, FP," says Fred, eyes still trained on the coaster, "remember when we both took dates here in freshman year?"

“Yeah, and got stuck on the Ferris wheel,” deadpans FP. He looks with some longing over his shoulder at the gates they’d come through. Maybe he could fake a very quick illness. Or a death in the family.

"FP, do you remember their names?" Fred bugs him.

"No."

"Oh, you do so, you big liar, but whatever." Fred’s face lights up as he turns to take in the colourful maze of stalls that stretched out into the field beside them. "Food trucks!"

Alice’s hand clamps down on his wrist. "Rides first, then food trucks."

"I want a soft pretzel," begs Fred, straining against Alice's arm like a little kid. "I won't puke it, I swear."

Fp watches with wry amusement. The first thing Fred wants every year is a soft pretzel. Then he buys one and complains it's too dry, or too salty, or too hard. The same pretzel cart has been showing up to these things every year he's known them, and probably selling the same four year old pretzels, too.

"Give me soft pretzels or give me death," quotes Fred solemnly, and Alice releases him.

“Fine. But no one else is eating anything until we’ve done the big stuff.”

"Explain to me again why you're all so attached to this thing," asks Mary, who’s been hovering by Fred’s side.

"It's a nostalgia thing,” says Hermione. “We've done it every year, the four of us. Since the fall fair in freshman year."

“Soft pretzels!” whoops Fred, the way a little kid might hop off a picnic table shouting _Paratroops over the side!_ , and takes off running. No one follows him, and he doesn’t care. FP wishes dearly for that kind of unselfconsciousness, that joy at the idea of salty fairground meals and gut-churning death traps.

Biannually, (meaning twice a year, not every two years) the Southside fairgrounds are taken over by the Fall Fair in October, and the Spring Fair in May-June (weather permitting.) The fair runs for two weeks, meaning you can go back, and they always do - Mary goes with her family every year, Fred and Hermione in earlier years would spend a whole week of dates there. FP and Fred usually do their own thing on a weekend, and he’s goofed off with Hermione in the carnival alley a couple times, just the two of them. Somehow no one in town gets bored of the place, of it’s endless, tacky amazements and crap carnival fare.

The fairgrounds are right on the place where Northside meets South, their nighttime a tantalizing glimpse of grittiness for Northsiders, their daytime too tame and cookie-cutter for most residents of the Southside, who mostly hang around down by the boardwalk near closing. Fred and his sisters have been going here since he was a foot high, it's equally been tradition for Mary's family. FP and Alice have considerably less family-friendly memories here: trysts under the boardwalk, drugs sold in the shadow of the tilt-a-whirl. In autumn people come equally for the livestock shows, the pie baking and pie eating contests, (FP is currently reigning champion of the under-25 division) but in spring all that matters are the rides.

They hit the roller coaster first - the wooden one that was built somewhere around the spring of 1922. _Fast rides first_ is their only fairground rule, hoping to avoid as many technicolour yawns as possible. Fred demolishes his soft pretzel in three messy bites as not to hold them up.

“You’re crazy,” says Hermione, as she has since they were freshmen, and FP knows full well she’s going to ride it anyway. “One year this thing is going to break.”  

“Better hope it’s next year,” says Fred cheerfully, and squeezes Mary’s hand. “Are you a front car person, Mer?”

“I’m a whatever car person,” says Mary. “You choose.”

“FRONT!” bellows Fred, as if anyone else is lunatic enough to challenge him for it.

“Ooh, I’m scared-” he says once they’re actually getting in. “FP, you go in front.”

“In your dreams,” says FP, marvelling at the nonchalance with which Fred had admitted it, even in front of Mary. Figures they must be getting pretty serious if Fred’s ready to tell her when he’s feeling yellow. FP hadn’t wanted to admit it their freshman year, had almost let himself sit up front just because the alternative was telling Fred he was scared, but Fred had saved the day by chickening out, same as now. They’d sat in the middle.

“FP, go in front so you don’t puke on anyone.”

“I’m fine. I haven’t eaten all day.”

“That’s bad for you,” says Fred and hesitates before plunging into the front seat. Mary rolls her eyes and sits next to him.

“Fred, you owe me a buck if you throw that pretzel back up,” says Alice.

“FP, if you puke on me, I’ll kill you,” adds Hermione, but winks at him so he knows she’s joking. She squeezes his hand and slips into a backseat. FP sits down beside her. That leaves Alice as the odd man out, and FP feels a small, painful rush of gratitude for it. Alice gets into the car directly behind them. The attendant comes by, yanks on their seat bars, and passes by.

“I want off,” says FP immediately.

“No, you don’t,” says Hermione. She grips one of his hands anyway, and squeezes it again. “It’ll be over before you know it.”

“All right, start her up.” hollers one of the blue-shirted attendants to the other. They’re Southside teens, scarcely older than the four of them, and FP briefly wonders about the sanity of leaving their very fucking immortal souls to a bunch of pimple-faced, greasy-haired teenagers who were probably already high.

With a massive grinding noise, the coaster starts moving up the tall wooden hill. FP feels the blood fall out of his face, knows he probably looks ridiculously afraid, but Alice can only see the back of his head and Fred, at the front, is whispering to Mary and doesn’t turn around. FP tries breathing in through his mouth and out through his nose. Or was it the other way around? In through your nose and out through your mouth? It doesn’t matter anyway. His palms have started to sweat and he thinks he’s done his breathing for the next little while.

The car reaches the precipice and pauses. FP would sell his motorbike to be safely back on the ground right now. He’d give away his life savings just to get off. The blood is pulsing in his ears, and the only thing his mind has room for is an exhaustive repetition of the same four letter curse word  - fuckfuckfuckfuck **_fUCK-_ **

Fred screams the loudest out of all of them when the car drops, but FP hears Hermione join him, her voice high enough to send a spike of pain through his right eardrum. FP doesn’t understand how anyone can scream on these things. He flattens both his feet to the floor of the car, trying and failing to neutralize the way his stomach catches so high in his mouth that he could have reached past his tongue and touched it. His hands are slippery on the bar as he tries to silently push himself firmly against gravity back into his seat, and he has a horrible vision, even with the blood beating too loud in his ears to think, of himself flying over the bar and ending up down there at the bottom of the track. He presses his lips involuntarily tight together and rushes down toward the bottom in total silence, broken only when -

 _“FUCK!”_ he bellows involuntarily at the top of his voice when they hit the bottom of the hill and go shooting at top speed over a bump in the track and toward the first loop. Their roller coaster is _fast_ , faster than some of the metal ones out there, Fred promises him. Probably built without a very thought as to safety, too: how many kids must have died on this thing in the nineteen-twenties? In the time it takes him to blink they’re shooting upside-down, which might be FP’s least favourite sensation in the world, even worse than the hill. Fred and Mary have their arms up like idiots. FP sends up a quick prayer to a God he doesn’t believe in that they don’t fall out.

He holds his breath as they round the loop and plummet back down a smaller hill, his stomach now actually in his mouth, so that he feels if he breathes in again it’ll drop off his tongue and out into the air. There’s a series of sharp zig-zags and dips in the track that knocks him into Hermione. and then painfully against the other wooden side of the car. Hermione screams as they get close to the second loop and FP wishes he could close his eyes for it, but he’s learned from experience that closing your eyes just makes it worse.

Almost done, he thinks wildly to himself as their car hurtles unstoppably toward the loop. Almost done, almost done, almost done -

“FUCK _!_ ” he yells again as the ride pitches up the loop, his voice considerably weaker now. Fred is hollering at the top of his voice, Mary screaming under him, and although their voices carry nothing but pure terror in the moment, he knows with a perverse annoyance that they’re somehow enjoying themselves. He can see nothing but the track in front of them, the blue sky under them, above them, all around them, and he screams before he can stop himself, the track tilting dizzily in front of his eyes.

The coaster flies out of the loop, shoots up a final hill, twists at the top so that they fall momentarily sideways - he’s pushed against Hermione, thankfully, who bears the brunt of his weight like a champion - and then plunges back down, the wooden planks thudding as loudly as a plane wreck. FP can feel everything he didn’t eat that morning climbing into his throat and wanting to be let out.

When the car jerks to a neck-snapping halt he gasps in a lungful of air, feeling like he hasn’t breathed in weeks. His head is spinning and his hands are painfully locked onto the safety bar. _Over_ , he thinks gratefully, _Done_ , and realizes it really is: this is probably the last time he’ll ever have to ride that thing. For a moment, he’s almost sorry that he hadn’t paid more attention.

Then the car starts moving.

“NO!” screams FP as the ride starts climbing the hill, moving too far past the loading zone now for this to be a simple re-adjustment, but his voice is lost to the grinding of chains. They’re going through again. Never once in all his life has the coaster gone through more than once. _“NO! NO!”_

Fred, way up at the front, twists around worriedly to look at him, but then Fred’s car pitches over the drop and FP can’t see him anymore.

He does scream going down the hill this time, a scream that starts in him from the moment Fred’s suntanned face disappears from his view and carries him all the way to the bottom of the first loop-the-loop. It’s worse the second time around. If he wasn’t too scared to draw breath, he might be sobbing. Fred is screaming his head off, too, but FP can tell he’s enjoying it all over again and it makes him want to kick him in the back of the head. FP waits on Hermione for any kind of comfort, but she’s screaming and squeezing the bar so tight between her hands that she has no time to take one of his even if he’d wanted to.

The twist at the top of the last hill throws him hard into her lap, his heart somewhere up in the region of his adam’s apple, his stomach sitting somewhere on his tongue. He’d heard once that rides like this actually do shake your organs a bit around inside of you. _Fuck_ , this whole fairground was such a bad idea. He has a sharp, momentary vision of himself returning later tonight with a lighter to burn this fucker to the ground.

The last hill makes him scream louder than ever, his already aching throat feeling as raw as if he’d been scraping it with a cheese grater. The car snaps to a stop for a second time, pressing the tacky metal of the safety restraint deep into his roiling stomach. FP leans limply over the bar and feels the way shipwreck survivors must feel when they finally wash up on land.

“Oops,” says one of the attendants with a snaggle-toothed grin. “Sent you guys through twice.”

“Are you kidding me?!” snaps Mary, popping her seat bar up without permission and standing up in the front car, hands planted on hips. “Are you fucking kidding me? That was totally irresponsible!” She faces down the much taller Southside teen, face set with rage. Fred keeps sitting, looking like he has no idea what to do and has just decided to stay put until a solution presents itself. “You have no business doing that! We consented to go on this thing _once_. You think that’s funny, do you? You’d be paying through the ass if you sent one of us to the hospital.”

The guy, who had looked amused at first, now looks wary. “Hey, it was just a joke-”

“A joke? Let’s see how funny you think it is when I -”

“Mary, come on-” says Hermione in a tone that brooks no nonsense. Having helped FP shakily to his feet and out of the car, she grips one of Mary’s arms with her long, manicured fingers now and steers her out of the ride. Mary glowers at the Southside kids until they’re out of sight. She stomps all the way down the steps, fuming.

“That was so ridiculous. How are you doing, FP?”

Everyone’s head snaps around to look at him. FP feels embarrassed and keeps his eyes on the ground. “I’m fine. It wasn’t a big deal.” All the moisture has been sucked from his mouth, and his legs are shaking, but he’s gratefully no closer to throwing up than he was earlier. If Mary keeps going off about this he’s going to die of shame. “Seriously.”

“What’s next?” asks Fred, sensing FP’s embarrassment and trying valiantly to change the topic. “We gotta keep our momentum up. It’s almost dark.”

“Haunted house,” offers Hermione. “Then my stomach can settle.”

FP relaxes. The haunted house never scares him. Fred absolutely loses his shit in there, though, and if anything’s going to make him feel less shaky it’s the look on Fred’s face when he comes up against an animatronic clown.

“Let’s go,” says Alice impatiently. “Nothing in there can be scarier than what Mary wants to do to those kids right now.”

* * *

So, Alice broke the rule this year.

The first time any of them go to the fair is supposed to be their group visit, the four year old high school tradition that Fred and Hermione hold so dear to their hearts. But when the Coopers had invited her along on opening night, when Hermione and FP were busy with a football game, and Fred had had a family thing going on, what was she supposed to say? No?

She'd gone with Hal for the opening, and written a top-notch article for his dad's paper about the history of the fairground. FP had scowled in the hallway, folded it up and smushed his paper down in the garbage can. Alice thought maybe he thought she had no right to put their neighbourhood in the Register like that, lay it out in clean blocks of text and colour photos. But it wasn’t any of FP’s business what she wrote about the South Side, any more than it was his business who she went to the fair with.

Fred had looked disappointed that their tradition had been broken, but not that disappointed. She’d argued that she’d gone with the Coopers during the _day_ , and that the four of them always went at _night_ , and that it wasn’t the same thing at all. Alice figures he’ll get over it. Besides, Fred had broken the rule by inviting Mary this year, and no one was mad at _him_.

In the haunted house, Fred sandwiches himself between FP and Mary in the front seat of the car. Alice sits with Hermione in the back, watches her wince every time something pops out at them, cringing a little against Alice’s side. At one point FP touches the back of Fred’s neck, and Alice watches with satisfaction as he jumps about a foot.

“Can we get something to drink?” asks FP next, as they’re all blinking in the bright sunshine.

The nearest food truck sells slurpees with crushed ice. If the hand-lettered sign beneath the overhang is to be believed, it also sells deep fried chocolate bars, but Alice steers Fred carefully to the other side of the line. Fred has a cast iron stomach, but he isn’t immune to the vomit-inducing powers of the tilt-a-whirl. Alice has no interest in seeing a deep fried chocolate bar, before or after it's been in anyone's stomach.

FP gets a blue slurpee and some water. Alice orders a red one. Mary and Fred get a green one with two straws.

“How can you voluntarily drink anything green?” Hermione wants to know, sipping her lemon ice.

“Same reason she’s dating Fred Andrews,” cracks FP, who looks moderately less peaky after his paper cup of water. “No taste.”

Fred spits a mouthful of drink at him. Alice starts to feel like she’s babysitting Hal’s younger brothers after all.

“Tilt-a-whirl next?” asks Fred hopefully, when they’ve all sucked their drinks into nothing. He gathers up FP and Hermione’s cups along with his own and dumps them in the nearest trash.

“Tunnel of love?” counters FP anxiously. Alice squints at him, but realizes FP’s really just drawing out the time before he has to be on anything that goes upside down again.

Fred lights up like a Christmas display. “All right!”

The tunnel of love is Fred's favourite, but Mary will bear no cliches. She has plenty of time, anyways, the two of them have another fair date planned for this week to be lovey-dovey. Instead Mary seizes Hermione by the hand and pulls her toward it, and they run off giggling.

"Shall we?" says Fred courteously, and offers an arm to FP, who's spent a fair amount of time on his own pawing and being pawed by Fred Andrews in pink wooden boats in the fair’s man-made river. The Tunnel of Love shared many of the qualities of a movie-theatre backseat - even the faint smell of popcorn.

“What, and leave Ally out?” asks FP, looking uncomfortably over at her.

“The more the merrier,” says Fred, and Alice folds her arms. Maybe in another life she would have entertained the notion of a fumbling riverboat threesome, if only to play with Fred a bit, but she’s too old for those kinds of games now. And after four years, she’s very done with seeing either of them naked.

The three of them ride some rattling cage contraption instead. Alice sits as far away from FP as possible.

“In case you hurl,” she says to him, because he looks a bit glum about it.

That’s not the only reason, though, and they both know it. It’s about that newspaper article. And a quarterback named Hal Cooper.

* * *

“I’ve been in here with Fred, you know,” says Hermione. They’re waiting at the rope to be let into the tunnel of love, the pavement damp and sticky under their shoes. The river water is warm, and the chains that guide the line into place are damp and dripping.

“Oh, pooh, is that supposed to bother me? He’s been in here with every boy and girl at school, I don’t bet.” Mary pauses. “How far did he take you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about running the bases.” Mary ducks under the rope as the attendant waves them through, heading for a large, pink boat. “I thought you were a sportswoman, Minnie.”

“Usually only FP calls me that.”

“Do you mind it?”

“No.”

“So, answer the question.”

“Second base. If you think I’m going to let him get my skirt down in some nasty carnival ride, you’ve got something else coming. Cute as he is.” Hermione hops neatly into the seat of the boat and waits for Mary to join her.

“All right. Just want to know what to expect.”

The boat begins to move slowly away from the shore, the warm water lapping at the peeling edges of the ride. The Tunnel of Love is the second oldest ride there, built sometime around the nineteen-fifties. Back then, you had to paddle yourself through. Now they’re attached to a track underneath the water.

“Do you think anyone’s ever drow-”

“So, have you and Fred-”

They both start speaking at the same time, and then abruptly stop. Hermione laughs and shakes her hair out of her face. “Sorry.”

“No, go ahead.”

“No, you go.”

“It wasn’t important.”

“Mine wasn’t either.”

Mary looks quizzically at her, but Hermione smiles and says nothing. Mary doesn’t push. They fall instead into a calm silence, Hermione inching just a bit closer to her on the wooden bench, so that their bare thighs brush.

“So, what’s Alice’s plan?” asks Mary as they approach the tunnel.

“How do you mean?”

“I’m talking Hal. And FP.” Their boat passes under the bridge, plunging the two of them momentarily into darkness. Hermione blinks as her eyes adjust to the dark. “Come June. Sooner or later, she’s going to be married into a respectable founding family with a hand in the jam jar of small town newspaper reporting. Have kids with the last name Cooper. Is that the plan?”

“As far as I know.”

“But - does she love him?”

“None of our business if she does.” They’re into the dark now. A few of the faded pink lightbulbs on the starboard side of the boat have started to glow, so that Hermione can see the outline of her face, the neat bob of her hair. “Anyways, how about you? What’s your plan? Find a little house on a cul de sac with Fred and start having babies?”

“That’s his plan.”

“Well, isn’t it the same difference?”

“No.” says Mary firmly. “It’s not.”

Hermione is quiet for a moment. “But you want kids, Mer. You’ve always wanted kids.”

“I do. But not like Fred wants them.” Mary’s clothes rustle as she turns away from her. In the bare light from the pink bulbs, Hermione can just catch the curve of her shoulder.

Hermione laughs at that. “Tables have turned.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean that, back last spring, it was me making a fuss about this. About how I can’t give him what he wants. Remember? You were trying to calm me down.”

“I remember you were ready to throttle him because you found a list of girls names in his desk.” Mary grins. “Ranked by preference, I might add.”

“Literally, how was I to know he was planning baby names. What normal human does that in study hall? I made the obvious assumption.”

“What, that Fred’s little black book solely consists of names like Calliope?”

“Oh, yuk it up. You were losing your shit right along with me.”

“That’s another thing. Did you see some of those names on his awful list? If I’m not ready for a baby, I’m sure as hell not ready for one named Benedicta.”

“Mary, he’s not going to ask you to do anything you don’t want to do. He likes you for you. Not as some imaginary baby incubator. Fred’s not ready for kids, anyway. He’s seven-fucking-teen.”

“Oh, he is. You should see the sappy look he gets on his face when he sees one.”

“He’s seventeen, Mer. Even Fred should know that’s stupid. He can wait. He can take his biological clock and shove it.” She pauses, their knees bumping in the dark. “Has he said anything to you?”

“About what?”

“About trying to get you to make babies right out of school!”

“God, no. But I just know he wants them.”

“He can want them after you get your degree.” Hermione pauses, the silence thick in the black of the tunnel. “Mary, you want to break up with him, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t,” says Mary quickly.  

“But you’re thinking about it.”

Mary swallows. “Maybe.”

Hermione lets out a low whistle. “No kidding.”

“It’s just isn’t there more to it, Hermione?” asks Mary with rising desperation. “More than high school and finding someone you can say ‘I love you’ to and then just marrying them? I always thought there was supposed to be _more_ than that.”

“More like what?”

“I don’t know. Just more.” Mary rests her cheek against Hermione in the dark. “Help me out, Hermione. What do you think?”

“We’re getting awfully deep, here, Mer. Maybe you should go to the fortune teller booth. I can’t tell you this stuff.”

“Just say anything. Tell me I’m not crazy.”

“You’re not crazy.” Hermione scoops an arm around her, tugging her close. “I think you’ve got a good thing going. Back when we were a thing, Fred was a mess. He was skinny and gross and just wanted to rock and roll. He rode a bike everywhere.” She squeezes Mary’s knee. “You’ve got a new, improved Fred. He has job prospects. He’s serious. And he’s got a car.”

“I’m not marrying him for his car.”

“You didn’t let me _finish_ , Mary. Yeah, he’s great. And he’s great to you. But you deserve someone who makes you really, truly, happy. And if Fred doesn’t do it, then Fred doesn’t do it. Okay?”

“He does make me happy. I just-”

“You want more. That makes sense.” Hermione must shake her hair out again, because the curtain of it tickles against Mary’s exposed skin. “If I was you, I’d never settle for less than you want.”  

Mary lifts her head slightly from Hermione’s shoulder. “Let’s quit talking about Fred, okay?”

“Fine by me,” says Hermione. “But don’t ask me a word about Hiram, either. Or any boys.”

“I respect the bechdel test as much as the next woman, Hermione.”

“Fine then, deal.” Hermione reaches out and tugs on one of the straps of Mary’s tank top. “Seal it with a kiss.”

They’re coming up on the flashing pink sign reading _KISS YOUR SWEETHEART!_ Hermione leans in, and before she can even think about resisting, Mary unconsciously bridges the gap. Hermione’s lips meet hers with the sticky berry flavour of her favourite lip gloss.

Mary opens her mouth and lets Hermione’s tongue slip through her teeth, eyes falling shut against the gloom. She presses her tongue against Hermione’s, anchoring herself with one hand on Hermione’s bare knee. Hermione shifts every closer to her, her breasts beginning to press against Mary’s chest, and Mary feels a tingle in her that has nothing to do with the ride.

They jerk apart at a burst of light: their boat has drifted out of the opposite end of the tunnel and back into the noise of the fair. Hermione smiles prettily and wipes a few smears of lip gloss from the soft edges of Mary’s cheeks. Mary reaches out in turn and tucks an errant strand of Hermione’s dark hair behind her ear.

Hermione’s lips twitch at the gesture. “How about this, Mary?” she asks softly as they dismount, her voice pitched lower than usual. She reaches out and grips Mary’s hand, pinches the skin there. “Was this a mistake?”

Their fingers entwine almost of their own accord, gripping each other palm to palm. Mary thinks about it. Wonders if this is the _more_ that she’s wanting. Thinks maybe no. But also thinks maybe she’ll never stop thinking about it.

* * *

 

“How’s he doing?” calls Alice, leaning against the wall with a cigarette.

FP’s hunched over beside the building that houses the bathrooms, one hand planted on the brick wall, intent on bringing up everything he’d put in his stomach. Fred’s standing at his shoulder, holding FP’s hair out of the way with one hand, the other smoothing reassuring circles into his trembling back.

“He’s okay,” calls Fred, then lowers his voice. “You’re okay, right?”

FP spits on the ground - it comes out blue - and nods breathlessly. He closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to look at the puddle of vomit in between his feet, and every sensation momentarily disappears except for the hot sweat on his face and the warm, steady clasp of Fred’s palm against his skin.

“Gum?” asks Alice, as Fred steers him back in her direction, and offers him a stick of strawberry. FP grimaces, but takes it from her. Better than tasting the hot remains of blue slurpee in his throat.

“Better out than in,” says Fred reassuringly, and pats him gently on the back. FP wants to begrudge him for it, but the gesture is actually soothing. He nibbles on the stick of gum and then pushes it whole into his mouth, grimacing at the cold flood of saliva that’s still on his tongue.

“You didn’t ralph after Serpent initiation,” notes Alice dryly. “What’s changed?”

“The Serpents didn’t make me go on some death-trap carnival ride, _Ally_ ,” growls FP. His nose is stinging, and he’s not in the mood for a fight.

Fred’s head swivels from one of them to the other like a spectator at a boxing match. He looks at Alice now, waiting for her to tell FP never to call her that again. But instead she softens, reaches out with the hand not holding the cigarette, and wipes some of the sweat from his brow.

It hurts when she touches him. It hurts in ways he can’t describe.

“Yuck,” says Alice when she draws her hand back, wiping FP's sweat off on her sleeve. 

“Sorry,” says Fred. “That ride was a mistake.”

“What's life for,” says FP sardonically, just to shut them all up about it. “Let’s just sit down for a bit.”

* * *

The attendant gives them a weird look when they get in line for a second time, but lets them under the rope without comment. Mary touches her mouth self-consciously, searching by feel for any errant trace of Hermione’s lip gloss.

“I can’t wait to be out of here,” says Hermione with a sigh.

Mary feels a quick prickle of jealousy. Hermione at least had somewhere to go. “I know what you mean,” she commiserates, glancing out over the calm water.

“Do you?” Hermione squeezes Mary’s hand, laced with hers, and Mary realizes why the worker had looked at them weird. “What do I mean?”

Mary lifts her shoulders. “Stuff like this. That corny sign saying KISS YOUR SWEETHEART. My mom and dad used to ride this same ride, you know that? They tell me every time we go. And maybe I don’t want to have to tell my kids that I got to second base with their dad here. Maybe I want to end up somewhere this crappy fairground isn’t the height of excitement.”

“Hm.” Hermione steps into the boat. “Guess you and I are one and the same, Mer.” She sits down neatly on the bench and lets Mary join her. “Well, maybe Fred-”

“Don’t talk about Fred.”

Hermione laughs out loud, and Mary thinks it’s one of the nicest sounds she’s ever heard. “Suits me.”

Mary doesn’t wait once they’ve plunged into the tunnel this time, leans immediately in and catches Hermione’s top lip between her own. Hermione opens the slit of her mouth just enough for Mary’s tongue to run along the back edge of her teeth, and Mary moves her hand instinctively back to Hermione’s knee, tugging her closer, pressing that berry taste deeper into her mouth.

She doesn’t know what she wants, that much is true. But she wants this, right here and right now, just as much as she’s ever wanted to go to law school, or make the cheer squad, or anything.

Mary wants to kiss her neck - really kiss her, mark the beautiful skin there under her expensive charm necklace - a gift from Mr. Hiram Lodge himself - suck mottled red crescents into her collarbone until she gasps from it. But the theme of the night is discretion, and she nibbles instead on the rim of Hermione’s ear, tugging the earlobe gently between her teeth. She has no idea what Fred and Alice and FP would think if they came back with their necks bruised with hickeys, and doesn’t need to find out.

Mary shifts position on the bench when she feels Hermione tugging the bottom of her scoop-neck t-shirt out of the waistband of Mary’s skirt.

“I learned this from Fred,” murmurs Hermione into her mouth, teeth knocking against Mary’s lips with what Mary can’t see in the dark but assumes is a wicked grin, and slips one warm up her shirt to land firmly against her breast.

* * *

“FP threw up,” Fred relays to Hermione when she and Mary join them again. They’re sitting at the picnic benches outside the tunnel of love, Alice smoking her fourth cigarette down to the filter. FP has been strategically placed to her left to block the view from the ticket counters in case anyone actually decides to enforce the no smoking rule, but Alice probably has more to fear from overwrought Northside mothers noticing her habit. Everyone who works at the carnival knows and respects Alice’s dad.

“Well, one less thing to worry about,” says Hermione, and plunks down on the bench beside them. She turns to Alice. “Is my lipstick all right?”

Alice blows out a mouthful of smoke. “Fine.”

Mary gives FP a sympathetic look and squeezes in beside him at the table. “Are you okay?”

“It was fine. I feel better now.”

“It came out his nose,” says Fred unnecessarily. “It was awesome.”

They get into an argument about what to do next. Fred wants to try his hand at the games but Alice dislikes the carnival alley, doesn't want to go because that's where the guys from school will be, if they're there, Hal's friends. Fred huffs at her and then goes off grinning with Hermione on one arm, Mary on the other. FP and Alice ride the chained swings until they come back.

She sits just ahead of him and flying along behind her he can't keep his eyes from her, the way the fairlight catches in her hair, the way her tennis shoes dangle. He hates thinking about it but despite it all, he still loves her. Loves her in a deep way that he knows won’t leave him, ebbing but never disappearing, like sand off a cliff face. Eroding but never gone.

He realizes suddenly what it is that makes Riverdale so horrible and beautiful, what has always allured him to it just as it displeased him - that it was a place where nothing ever changes. They are standing on land that his great grandfathers and Fred's great grandfathers worked once, and raised sons, and built fucked up death traps of a roller coaster. Years before them and years from now kids probably rode these chained swings, and smoked, and felt miserable and frightened. The class of 1990 and 1986 and 1940 and 1920 probably stood around here feeling just as shitty as he did about the end of everything.

“You know,” says Alice forcefully to him as they’re in line for the fifth time, “if you want to fuck him so bad, you’d better do it soon. I bet he asks Mary to marry him right after graduation. He wants to start making babies.”

She talks the way the old Alice talks, the way Alice talked to him in eighth grade, vulgar and smart and loud.

“Shut the fuck up, Ally.” says FP. “Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.”

She steps closer to him, pops her gum, and for a minute FP thinks she’s going to kiss him. Or throttle him, or both.

“Sorry,” she says finally, Hal Cooper’s girl again. “Let’s not fight.”

* * *

They go on the merry go round, because they always do, because it's part of the tradition, even though none of them get the thrill out of it they used to get, and the peeling, crumbling quality of the plaster horses is more apparent to them now, their knees come up too high when they try to sit on their bare backs. Both Mary and Hermione now have large stuffed animals to their names, and have to hold them pressed to their chests as the ride turns. FP dangles his legs out of the stirrups so that his toes skim the ground.

He’s over it, and yet he doesn’t want it to be over. Wants to set back the clock so that they’re all fourteen again, excited freshmen doing something cool for the first time. Wants achingly and peculiarly for one specific moment in his memory, their first time ever going here together, Fred riding the tilt-a-whirl while he sat it out just to watch. Standing by the rail and just watching him, Fred with his eyes closed being spun and spun and spun, hopelessly, dizzyingly, joyfully, and the colours and sounds of the fair blurred into a meaningless, indecipherable streak through his closed eyelids, the night air on his face. Fred young and happy and spinning and at peace.

He hopes he isn’t going to cry.

"One last ride," says Fred when they get off the horses, meaning one second-last ride, because the last, of course, is the Ferris wheel. They’ve never gone to the fair without doing the Ferris wheel last: late, when all the lights of the fair have come on and all the lights across the river have gone out. Hermione complains that it’s boring, but admits there’s something magic about the view, especially when the car crests to its highest peak and all of it is spread out below them.

FP sits the second-last ride out, not anxious to see the rest of last night’s dinner make a return trip. Fred and Mary come running back to him, laughing, when it’s done and he feels the same endless pang that he had getting off the carousel - a longing for a past that he never really had, because Fred, spinning endlessly and forever on the tilt-a-whirl under the stars, had never really been his.

He reminds himself of this and yet doesn’t want to believe it. There’s a dark-haired little boy dismounting the carousel behind him, and if FP had had better parents, maybe he’d have that memory too - only FP’s parents had never brought him to the fair. No one had until Fred.

When they get to the line for the Ferris wheel, Fred stops for a long time. Everyone else falls into line beside him, like an unspoken command, chins tilted up for one last look.

He tries to guess what Fred's seeing, staring up at the Ferris wheel like that, himself at five, his first fair, or the dream of himself a father with a little boy like he once was, or a memory with FP in it - the two of them stuck up there with sunburns and their dates waiting, crossed-armed, far below. But Fred shakes himself out of whatever it is, and turns to them all with a huge smile.

“Are we sitting five, or are we splitting up?”

They crush everyone in together: it’s tradition, after all, and none of them really want to be alone with each other. FP sits gratefully with Mary on his one side and Hermione on his other. It’s Alice and Fred he doesn’t want to be too close to right now. The air is warm and sweet and he might do something crazy up here.

Something like love.

None of them cry when the circle completes its rotation, even though it’s the last time they’ll ever do this together. They dismount with aching legs and make the steady, unremarkable climb up the slope and out to the rest of their lives, the last three months that they will still matter to each other the way they do now. Mary squeezes Fred’s hand. FP stuffs his hands in his pockets.

They pause only once, at the top of the hill, when Fred needs to tie his shoe. FP looks out at all the lights and bells and whistles behind them, feels a gradual falling-away of his childhood, and realizes one day this will be all he has left.

He doesn’t notice that Fred, shoe now re-knotted in the floppy, complex way that only Fred knows how to do, is not looking at the view but at the back of his neck. He doesn’t notice how Hermione’s hand fits briefly into Mary’s, or how Alice is already looking away, off toward the Northside where the Register office sits patiently on Main Street, waiting for her.

He should have known not to get on that cage ride after a slurpee, but he had all the same.

What else is the fairground for, but making the same mistakes over and over. 

**Author's Note:**

> comments bring some small happiness back into fp's life as he rots in prison


End file.
